


Memories

by Skeren



Category: Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Gen, Howard Stark's A+ Parenting, Tony Stark Feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-25
Updated: 2016-07-25
Packaged: 2018-07-26 18:47:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,209
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7585807
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skeren/pseuds/Skeren
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony finally braves the house he grew up in and the memories inside.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Memories

It took Tony a while to actually brave the house his parents had lived in once the dust had settled and he was no longer dying. The video in the files that had saved his life? That had been important, and in more than just the ‘legacy of an element’ way. It had made him stop and think about things that he remembered through the lens of being a teenager, and to finally decide to man up and properly sort through the house he’d closed up and never looked back to after his parents died.

He’d built the Malibu house and never returned to the one he grew up in, and he was wondering what he’d missed because of that choice. He didn’t just mean on the science front either, though god alone knew there was probably plenty of that lingering around in his dad’s notes.

Still, when he arrived at the estate, he just sort of stared at it at first, sitting in his car in the turnaround out front, reluctant to actually enter the building. He had to remind himself that he chose to be here, and that this was something he was doing for himself. He was doing it because there were a few aches that needed to be lanced from the poor healing they’d had in the decades since they’d happened. He was doing it because he needed to face this as an equal this time, as someone who had a solid span of life experiences behind him now.

Telling himself all of that made it no easier.

The first thing he did on entering the house was start opening the windows. There was dust, of course there was, and he combated that by leaving the dust covers right where they were and moving quickly from room to room. He didn’t really look at anything on this first pass, focused on his task and reminded himself over and over that he was having issues breathing because of the dust, and for no other reason whatsoever.

The excuse didn’t really hold water as he got back to the entryway and found himself staring at a picture from when he was a kid, his mom’s arm around him and his dad’s hand on his shoulder as Ana tried to situate a flower crown on his head. Jarvis had taken that picture, as he had a lot of the pictures in the house, and the man had had a terrible habit of deliberately catching Ana on film even though she got exasperated at him every time for not waiting.

It had been funny watching him hold a perfectly straight face and claim he’d just have to take another. Tony had never thought about it before, but most of the pictures that lined the hallway were those. Not the polished final ones that were planned, but the mishaps and blips that Jarvis, and sometimes Ana, would catch on film. His dad wasn’t behind the camera anywhere near as often as those two, though his mom, well, she’d always liked taking pictures.

It was with this thought in mind that Tony started to make his way down the hall, looking at this picture and that. One of Peggy and him holding paint guns while looking victorious, another of his dad and him looking very seriously at one another, though Tony was almost certain the conversation hadn’t warranted those looks. He couldn’t actually remember anymore.

Still, this was the way he spent the next two hours, drifting from room to room, looking at pictures, finding trinkets that had been put down by one of his parents then never put away, because the Jarvises had been gone by then and his dad had never quite resumed the habit of keeping track of his own things before he died. He pocketed a couple things because of that, a few stray tools that were nowhere near where he remembered they’d actually belonged. 

That was what finally took him around to his dad’s workshop and office space, with throw covers hastily placed and papers carefully weighted. He’d locked the space up himself, unwilling to let anyone at anything, and had gone so far as to change the locks because he hadn’t wanted it touched. Time hadn’t been kind to what was left behind, and he promised himself he’d fix and complete what he could of the space instead of letting it fall back to neglect.

That’s what brought him to his dad’s desk, more storage space than work area, and he started to sort through things on it, putting the papers into piles and knowing he’d find no bills at least, as everything like that had been taken care of years ago and hadn’t been down _here._ Of course, none of that meant that he wasn’t finding things he didn’t expect, and slowly, as he sorted through the papers, he ended up with a stack, a good inch thick, of photos and hand-drawn pictures.

Tony was careful not to look at them too closely until he’d cleared the desk, only then sinking to sit as he started to look through them, hand drawn things first, some of which were so _old._ The first terrible blueprint attempt he’d made, pages of colorful scribble that was some kind of math, with notations where his dad had corrected it, and several other things of that nature that he didn’t even remember presenting to his dad, but obviously _had_ if they were here.

It was harder to look at the photos. 

All of them had him. Some had him and mom, or him and one of the Jarvises, or Peggy, or Obadiah. The last he set aside with prejudice, not wanting to look at those at all. Most of them, though, were him with his dad, and he honestly didn’t realize there were so _many._ Or that his dad had smiled at him so much when he’d been a kid. Not big smiles, no, never that, but they were still _there._

There was one of his dad and him as a toddler, in his crib and both of them asleep. There was another of him at four or five, building something on his father while the man talked on the phone. There was still another of him leaning over, drawing something on his dad’s face, though the angle didn’t show what. He had to have been at least seven in that one. And there were just so many, happy snippets that someone or another had to have caught on camera, and he didn’t remember most of them.

He remembered a few, though, and he was baffled how he could have forgotten, could have overlooked how much his dad obviously _cared_ with all of this spread in front of him. Yes, the man had never said the words, that was true, but that didn’t mean the emotion hadn’t been there.

When he left the mansion two hours later to get dinner and rest for the night, all he took with him was most of the pile of photos and the old stuffed bear that had lived on his bed as a kid. The rest he could come back and look at another time. 

He’d picked up the most important stuff.


End file.
